The Doctor and Leela find themselves in Victorian London. Girls are
being kidnapped off the street, ghosts have been sighted in the opera
house run by Henry Jago, and giant rats haunt the London sewers. At the
centre of the chaos is a mysterious Oriental magician named Li H'sen
Chang. Chang serves a man he believes is the god Weng-Chiang, and is
searching for a cabinet lost by his master. The Doctor uncovers the
truth, however -- Weng-Chiang is actually Magnus Greel, a tyrant from
the 60th century whose escape back through time has transformed him into
a disfigured monster.

Production

By the spring of 1976, script editor Robert Holmes was eager to end
Season Fourteen with a story that put a Doctor Who spin on the
legend of Jack the Ripper. The unidentified serial killer also known as
Saucy Jack had terrorised the prostitutes of London's Whitechapel
district in 1888 (and possibly until 1891). Holmes coined the notion
that killer could turn out to be a time traveller from the future and
suggested this to Robert Banks Stewart, whose last Doctor Who
work had been on the previous year's finale, The
Seeds Of Doom. A storyline entitled “The Foe From The
Future” was commissioned from Stewart on May 7th.

The summer of 1976 was a difficult one for Holmes: having completed work
on his own Doctor Who script, The Deadly
Assassin, Holmes departed for a rare family vacation to Italy.
Near Munich, however, his wife took ill with a perforated ulcer, forcing
an extended stay in Germany. Finally returning to the UK in August,
Holmes discovered that a message had been left for him from Stewart, who
explained that he had taken a new position as script editor on a Thames
Television programme called Armchair Thriller, and would
therefore be unable to do any work on “The Foe From The
Future”. With scant time remaining to find a replacement
adventure, it was agreed that Holmes would write the serial himself.
This was formally contracted on November 12th, under the title
“The Talons Of Greel”.

Philip Hinchcliffe vetoed having the Master as the villain
of the piece, fearing that this development was too obvious

By the time Holmes started work on Serial 4S, it appeared that
Hinchcliffe, and possibly Holmes himself, would be leaving Doctor
Who after Season Fourteen. Consequently, Hinchcliffe encouraged
Holmes to write whatever he wanted. The only idea vetoed by the producer
was the suggestion that the villain of the piece might be revealed as
the evil Time Lord known as the Master, whom Holmes had just
reintroduced in The Deadly Assassin.
Hinchcliffe feared that this was too obvious a development.

With nearly free reign, then, Holmes sought inspiration from several
sources in addition to the Whitechapel murders. He drew numerous
elements from the exploits of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's famous detective
Sherlock Holmes (introduced in 1887): for instance, Litefoot has a
housekeeper named Mrs Hudson, the Doctor misquotes Holmes' ubiquitous
“Elementary, my dear Watson”, and the discovery of an item
monogrammed “EB” echoes a similar development in the 1904
Holmes short story The Adventure Of The Abbey Grange. Gaston
Leroux's 1910 novel Le fantôme de l'opéra (better known
to English-speaking audiences as The Phantom Of The Opera) also
provided “The Talons Of Greel” with some of its trappings.
In addition, Hinchcliffe suggested that Holmes look to Sax Rohmer's
Fu Manchu canon (published from 1912) for the Oriental
ingredients of the adventure.

For several months, plans had been afoot to introduce a new, permanent
companion in the season finale. Holmes was eager to have the Doctor
accompanied by a Victorian street urchin whom he could educate during
their travels -- although Hinchcliffe had some reservations about the
idea -- and thought that the Jack the Ripper story was the ideal vehicle
for her introduction. In the meantime, Leela had been introduced in The Face Of Evil on an interim basis. With
changes to the production team imminent, however, it was decided in
August that there was no point creating a new companion who might not
meet the approval of Hinchcliffe's successor. Consequently, Leela would
be retained for “The Talons Of Greel” as well.

During the scripting process, Holmes consulted closely with the director
assigned to Serial 4S, David Maloney, who had just finished working on
The Deadly Assassin. The plot was
structured so that location filming -- which would be carried out first
-- was chiefly confined to the early episodes, enabling Maloney to start
planning these as early as possible. Now certain that “The Talons
Of Greel” would be the final Doctor Who story made under
his aegis, Hinchcliffe was much less concerned than usual about hewing
to the programme's narrow budget. Amongst the benefits of the producer's
loose purse strings were a rare allocation for night filming, and the
use of many different locations.

Tom Baker had been promised that Leela would be replaced,
but Graham Williams asked Louise Jameson to stay on Doctor Who

The first of these was Skin Market Place, where street scenes were
filmed on December 13th. The same day, material inside the coaches was
enacted at the Ealing Television Film Studios. Tom Baker was given a new
costume for the serial, one that intentionally recalled the classic
Sherlock Holmes silhouette of deerstalker hat and cloak. More street
scenes were recorded on the 14th, at Clink Street, St Mary Overy's Wharf
and Bankside. The next day, the Broad Oak nursery school served as the
exterior of Litefoot's house. December 16th began at Wapping Pier Head,
for sequences on the street, beside the Thames, and outside the
coroner's. Later that day, mortuary exteriors were captured at Bridewell
Place. The first week of filming concluded on the 17th at St Katherine's
Docks, dealing with action around the sewer entrance (at Ivory House) as
well as the scenes involving the rowboat.

During this time, new producer Graham Williams gradually began to take
over stewardship of Doctor Who from Philip Hinchcliffe. His first
major decision concerned Leela, and during location filming he asked
Louise Jameson to stay with the programme for Season Fifteen. This offer
ran counter to a promise Hinchcliffe had made to Tom Baker; the series
star disliked Leela, feeling that her violent tendencies were
inappropriate for Doctor Who, and indeed aspired to carry the
programme without a companion at all. He had been mollified somewhat
with the assurance that Leela would be replaced after “The Talons
Of Greel”. Jameson herself was reluctant to remain on Doctor
Who, both because of her frosty relationship with Baker and the
discomfort she experienced wearing contact lenses to turn her blue eyes
brown. Williams offered to dispense with the lenses, and on December
15th both Baker and Jameson signed a contract for the entirety of
Doctor Who's fifteenth season.

Production on “The Talons Of Greel” resumed in the new year.
In exchange for dropping one of the serial's three allocated studio
blocks, Hinchcliffe had negotiated for a week of Outside Broadcast
recording instead: a rare instance in Doctor Who of location
material being captured directly on videotape. The venue for the week
was Northampton, beginning at an empty rates office (posing as the
police station) on January 8th, 1977. The next four days were spent at
the Northampton Repertory Theatre, which was dressed as The Palace.
During some of these scenes, the role of the orchestra conductor was
played by longtime Doctor Who composer Dudley Simpson. The last
day at the Repertory Theatre was January 12th, and part of this day, as
well as the entirety of the next, was spent at St Crispin's Hospital for
the material in Chang's dressing room and the mortuary.

Imperfect waterproofing resulted in a severe leak from
the sewer set through the studio floor to the BBC switchboard below

The first studio block comprised January 24th and 25th and took place in
BBC Television Centre Studio 1. On the first day, recording on the sewer
set caused inadvertent havoc at the BBC switchboard on the storey below,
when imperfect waterproofing resulted in severe leaking through the
studio floor. These sequences were also difficult for Louise Jameson,
who was suffering from glandular fever. Not only did she have to contend
with thrashing about in the water, but she discovered that the
undergarments which made up her costume became partly transparent when
damp.

Also performed on the first studio day were scenes in Litefoot's dining
room (for parts two to four) and his porch (for parts three and four).
The proceedings were taped by a crew from the new BBC2 series The
Lively Arts, who were making a documentary about Doctor Who
-- the first extensive behind-the-scenes chronicle of the programme in
its fourteen-year history. Entitled Whose Doctor Who, the episode
would air on April 3rd, the day after Doctor Who's season finale.
The studio block concluded on January 25th, when recording concentrated
on all the scenes in and around Greel's sanctum, as well as the Palace
cellar.

The second studio session was a three-day affair, running from February
8th to 10th in TC8. Unfortunately, Hinchcliffe's indifference to the
budget on “The Talons Of Greel” had resulted in considerable
anxiety for production unit manager Chris D'Oyly-John. To alleviate the
pressure on him, D'Oyly-John was replaced for the final leg of the
schedule by John Nathan-Turner, who was already slated to take over the
position for Season Fifteen.

Maloney chose to record all the remaining scenes for episode five on
February 8th, and those for episode six on the 9th. The exceptions were
sequences set in the Dragon Room and within the Head of the Dragon,
which were reserved for February 10th. Amongst the material completed on
this day was Lee's death. As originally scripted, he was to perish under
a barrage from Greel's energy weapon, but this was changed to the
scorpion sting. With recording on Serial 4S concluded, Doctor
Who's fourteenth production block came to an end. By this point,
Williams had convinced Holmes to stay on Doctor Who for the first
half of the next run, to ease his transition into the producer's
chair.

There was some discussion about developing a spin-off
series in which Jago and Litefoot would solve mysteries

At a very late stage, it was decided to modify the serial's title to
The Talons Of Weng-Chiang. Also altered was part five's
cliffhanger: originally, this was to be Greel threatening the Doctor
with Leela's death at the hands of Mr Sin, but material was shifted to
the next episode so that the installment would close on the reveal of
the villain's face instead.

The sixth and final episode of The Talons Of Weng-Chiang aired on
April 2nd, drawing Season Fourteen to a close. In its wake, particular
praise was reserved for the pairing of Henry Jago and Professor
Litefoot. Holmes enjoyed writing these kinds of “double
acts” -- even though, in this case, the two characters did not
meet on-screen until partway through the penultimate installment -- and
some discussion ensued about developing a spin-off series in which Jago
and Litefoot would solve mysteries in Victorian London. Meanwhile, in
the hiatus between production blocks, Tom Baker suggested that the next
season of Doctor Who might be his last. This would become a
familiar refrain for several years to follow...

The Talons Of Weng-Chiang brought to an end the Doctor Who
careers of two veterans of the programme. David Maloney became a
producer, taking the reigns of show such as Blake's 7 and the
1981 version of The Day Of The Triffids. He also continued to
direct, earning credits on Blake's 7, Juliet Bravo,
Play For Today and others. Maloney died of leukemia on July 18th,
2006.

Philip Hinchcliffe was shifted away from Doctor Who to take the
helm of the police drama Target. Thereafter he continued to build
an extensive resume of programmes on which he served as either producer
or executive producer, including Private Schulz, Nancy
Astor and Taggart. He also contributed three entries to
Target Books' range of Doctor Who novelisations, and in 1978
submitted an unused storyline to the Doctor Who production office
entitled “Valley Of The Lost”. Hinchcliffe now teaches media
studies, while making occasional appearances for the line of Doctor
Who DVDs.